Philosophy and Psychology

Philosophy and psychology is a pairing with deep roots in the history of both disciplines. Philosophy asks foundational questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, free will, personal identity, knowledge and moral reasoning. Psychology investigates these questions from a scientific standpoint, studying how mental processes, emotions, behaviours and social influences actually work in human beings and other animals.

Each discipline enriches the other: psychology provides empirical grounding for philosophical questions about the mind, while philosophy sharpens the conceptual precision with which psychological theories are articulated and evaluated.

At the University of Edinburgh, this four-year full-time programme includes a year abroad, providing the opportunity to study at a partner institution in another country. Edinburgh has strong research traditions in both philosophy and psychology, and the programme allows you to engage seriously with both, studying core areas of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and the philosophy of mind and language, alongside the main domains of scientific psychology, including cognitive, social, developmental and biological psychology, as well as research methods and statistics. The four-year structure gives time for both disciplines to be developed to a genuinely high level.

Graduates from philosophy and psychology programmes move into a diverse range of careers. Clinical psychology and counselling (following postgraduate training), research in cognitive science or neuroscience, education, human factors and user experience design, management consultancy, law, the civil service, journalism and ethics advisory roles are all well-established routes. The combination of rigorous argument and empirical scientific thinking that the programme develops is genuinely rare and highly valued.

Postgraduate study in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, clinical psychology or law provides a natural next step for those who wish to pursue particular career paths or research interests.